


Portman Square

by afterism



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Crossdressing, F/F, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26071084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/pseuds/afterism
Summary: Harriet Manders has an unexpected meeting with an old school friend.
Relationships: Bunny Manders/A. J. Raffles
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Rule 63 Exchange 2020





	Portman Square

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ilthit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/gifts).



> You had me at LADY THIEVES :D This was a joy to write, thank you so much for requesting it.

It had started, as most of my life's misadventures do, with a chance meeting.

I was leaving the pawnbroker's on Chancery Lane, having just undertaken the necessary evil of pledging the last of the good cutlery in order to pay for that month's coal. I was richer by a guinea and so buoyant with the knowledge that I could keep the wolves from my door for another week that I was oblivious to the "Miss Manders!" hailing me.

I stopped short. Florence Laine was strolling towards me, her arm linked with an older woman I vaguely recognised as her mother, and her left hand was stretched towards me as though she wished to grasp my own or simply display the large diamond ring on her third finger.

I hadn't seen her since the last day of boarding school some years ago, when we had pressed each other's hands and made equally insincere promises to write, and I was suddenly aware of the stain on the inside of my sleeve, and the tear on the hem I had been meaning to fix. I clutched my hands together, and smiled as if I could dazzle them into not seeing me.

"Harriet! What a pleasant surprise," said Florence, her gaze taking in everything from my scuffed boots to the hasty pile of my hair.

"My dear," Mrs Laine said, holding my gaze as though it would pain her to look any lower. "How lovely to see you." We exchanged pleasantries for a few moments, and then she looked pointedly at her daughter's hand, laid carefully over her own. "I'm sure you've heard the good news about Florence's engagement?"

I pretended I had, and offered my sincerest best wishes. They looked expectant.

"In fact, I was just on my way to purchase more note paper in order to send you my congratulations. I used my last sheet last night," I lied, and watched as their gazes drifted to the pawnbroker's shop on my left. "Oh, did you see those earrings in the window? I was quite taken with them until the shopkeeper informed me they're garnets, not rubies," I said, inventing with a zeal I was hitherto unaware of. 

"How disappointing," Florence said, stroking her neck with her left hand so the diamond caught the sun. Her gaze travelled over me again, with all the magnanimity of a queen walking past a tannery. "You must come to tea tomorrow," she said, and even as I started to demur she grabbed my waving hand and pressed it, her fingers pinching. "I've invited all the girls from school who have written to me, and John has promised to stop by with a few of his friends. It would be diabolical of you to miss it," she said, and I found myself unable to make an excuse.

She gave me her address and a time and another once-over that made it clear I would need a more fashionable dress if I wasn't to be turned away at the door, and left me.

I had no hopes of either enjoying myself or renewing a cherished acquaintance, but then, I had not expected to see Miss Raffles.

*

I arrived on time, in my finest skirt and bodice that I had spent the previous evening altering into something respectably plain instead of unthinkably out of fashion.

After the hellos and the exclamations of how long it had been and the introduction of the wealthy fiancé, I was moored at the side of the room, watching my old school friends bend their heads together like they hadn't lost a moment of intimacy. I felt desperately out of place, and wondered how long politeness dictated I must stay before I could make my excuses. 

"My dear Bunny, is that you?" said a voice at my elbow, and I found myself looking up into the blue eyes of Miss Raffles. 

"My goodness!" I said, and probably some other nonsense, but she smiled as though I was behaving perfectly rationally and led us to a spare bench in front of the window. 

She had been a few years ahead of Florence and me at boarding school, one of those dazzling older girls who seemed to have decades of experience over us younger students. I don't believe she would have ever known my name if I hadn't stumbled across her sneaking out of the dormitory one night — and instead of raising the alarm I had helped her, flashing a candle in the window to show when it was safe to creep back. It had been the most thrilling night of my sapling years, despite the cold of the flagstones under my stockinged feet and the long wait in the dark. 

It was the start of something almost like friendship, where during the day she might flash a smile at me in the corridors but never say hello, but at night she pressed my hands warmly and told me I was her greatest ally. I had been a quick learner and a quiet companion, never breathing a word of the escapes I had helped effect to anyone, and although she professed to simply not trust any of the girls in her year I took pride in being the only one in whom she placed her confidence.

"I had not expected to see anyone interesting here," Miss Raffles said, leaning close, and I bit my lip to tame my smile. She glanced over to where Florence was seated on the chaise longue near the centre of the room, touching her hand to her chin every few seconds so no one could miss the sparkle of diamonds around her wrist and fingers.

"She was always rather vulgar," she said, and we watched as the fiancé adjusted his equally ostentatious tie pin. "It seems she's found her perfect match."

"Miss Raffles!" I hissed, delightfully shocked. I had _missed_ this — the secrets whispered between us, the scandalous side of her only I was allowed to see. She grinned at me.

"I must admit, I find watching them as thrilling as a day at the zoo. All our unmarried friends gathered around, hoping to catch a rich bachelor for themselves."

It felt as though I'd accidentally swallowed ice. At my silence she looked at me, and I braced myself for her mocking laughter.

It didn't come. There was a pause, and then she spoke with a coldness I recognised but had never been on the receiving end of: "I suppose that's the fate of us all, Bunny, but I didn't expect it of you."

I flushed hotly.

"My brother can no longer support me," I said. In truth, I hadn't seen my brother since our parents passed and he ran off to India with his inheritance, leaving his debts and me behind. He had written a year ago to request the last of Mother's jewels, promising to make it up to snuff when he was back in England, but as I had sold those some six months previously I saw no reason to waste the postage in telling him.

"It's marriage or the workhouse," I admitted, not looking at her.

I flinched when she first touched my arm, but she simply laid her hand over my wrist, gentle and affectionate. "I'm sure we can do better than that," she said, and when I gathered the courage to meet her eye I found her smiling warmly. I relaxed, despite everything. I'd forgotten what a balm a friend could be.

"I myself find great success in calling myself a widow," she continued.

"Are you?"

"What difference would that make?" She studied my puzzled smile for a moment, and then said, "Yes, I do believe I can help you."

Hesitant to press the issue in case she changed her mind, I waited. Perhaps she knew of a governess post that required someone with less prodigious intelligence than hers. Perhaps — I dared hope — she was looking for a companion, or a chaperon. I would have done anything.

She was silent for a while, and I watched our old school friends sip tea and hold fixed smiles. With Miss Raffles beside me and the promise of change on the horizon I felt, for once, that being apart from them was not such a loss.

"Listen," Miss Raffles said, her voice suddenly hushed and urgent. "There's a costume party I've been invited to this evening. I thought it would be a dreadful bore but if _you_ came, my dear Bunny, I think it would be worth the trip. Will you join me?"

"I would be delighted," I said, matching her confidential tone, "but I have nothing suitable to wear." It was surprisingly freeing, somehow, to have someone who knew what dire straits I was in and yet still wished for my company. I felt lighter than I had in years, possibilities opening up in my thoughts like water lilies in a dark pond.

"Don't worry about _that_. You'll come to mine for supper beforehand, and I'm sure I can find something for you. You won't even recognise yourself!" she said, with a laugh that drew a glance or two in our direction, and I basked in that rare thrill of having one of the older girls pay attention to _me_ where everyone could see.

"If you're certain," I said, hope blooming in my chest, and Miss Raffles merely smiled and patted my arm again, her eyes bright with our secret.

*

We took our leave of Florence as the clock approached four, and as Miss Raffles saw no point in me kicking my heels at home she hailed a hansom cab to take us both back to her rooms in an equally respectable part of town.

The cab dropped us off in a street lined with houses some six stories high, split into flats and overlooking a small park, and as we stepped inside her building the porter greeted her with a nod and a, "How are you, Mrs Stonehurst?"

I said nothing, but on the turn of the stairs I caught her eye and found it twinkling. "A widow of means may keep an apartment by herself," she said, before I voiced any query.

I asked if that was the name I should call her, and she seemed to consider it for a moment as we continued up the stairs. "No," she said, a few steps later. "I fear that would just complicate things."

As confused as I was, I decided not to press the matter.

She gave me a brief tour of her rooms, pointing out the art and the china and a particularly fine carving she had picked up while she was in Melbourne. She called for tea while we caught up on each other's families (we were both light on relatives), and then spent the rest of afternoon dazzling me with stories of how she had spent the six years since I had last seen her: voyages and her time in the colonies and the society of the other side of the world; gossip about people I knew and people I only knew by reputation; scandals that she had been in the periphery of, acquaintances who had lost rings and brooches and paintings that perhaps they had no right to own in the first place. She seemed to delight in the mysteries, the unsolved cases that the papers sensationalised.

I realised, later, that she was vague about any chapereons, companions or suitors who might have accompanied her — she occasionally said 'we' instead of of 'I', but not often — but I was so overwhelmed with awe it didn't occur to me that she might be leaving anything out.

"It is so nice to have a friend I can tell everything to," she said, and I glowed with pleasure. She did ask after my life, but even with her in my confidences I was unwilling to rake over the details of how low I had fallen, and headed her off with shallow answers. She seemed to understand, and accept my reluctance to spare further embarrassment, but there was an assessing kind of light in her eye like I was part of a puzzle she wanted to solve. At one point, she asked me what I would do to save my reputation.

"Anything," I said immediately.

"Anything I asked of you?" she pressed.

"To spare myself the shame of having to sell the family house?" I almost laughed. " _Anything_."

After dinner, she poured me another glass of wine and went off to her room to change, promising to not be long.

I went to stand by the window, but the fog had descended and the lamp on the corner of the street below was just a faint glow in the gloom. I watched it blindly for a while, inwardly marvelling at the change in my circumstances in little over a day — materially I was still overdrawn and one bill away from poverty, but in every other aspect I felt positively rich. These fine rooms, the warmth from the fire, the sweet wine on my tongue; they weren't mine but I felt the comfort of them — the fact that Miss Raffles had embraced me and my troubles so readily — bolster my soul like a warm bedpan on a freezing night.

There was a lady-like cough behind me, and I blinked out of my thoughts as I turned around ready to marvel at Miss Raffles' costume — but instead of a tall woman there stood a young man of average height, slight build and a shadow of unshaven scruff around his jaw. He was dressed as a gentleman, his boots shined to a peach and his hand resting on a silver-topped cane and his black curls peeking out from under his top hat.

"Miss Raffles!" I exclaimed.

"You must call me A. J. tonight, no more of this 'Miss Raffles' business," she said, showing her teeth. "I think we're well acquainted enough for that."

I studied her, my frown deepening. "What sort of party is this?"

"An exclusive one," she said, tilting her jaw towards the mirror over the mantlepiece. She sighed, and her reflection caught my eye. "I perfectly understand if you don't wish to come, Bunny. It is perhaps not the place for respectable young women."

If only she had cajoled me to come, I could have resisted! I felt fourteen again, desperate to be liked and hang the consequences. She rested her cane against the arm of the chair I had been sitting in, and took off the hat to adjust the pile of hair that was hiding beneath it.

"Of course I'll come," I said, aware of my cheeks growing pink. "I'd just prefer to know what to expect."

"That would take the fun right out of it," she teased, and turned to look at me properly. "Now, let us find something suitable for you."

She took me by the hand — I almost expected hers to be rough and calloused suddenly, but it was as soft as ever — and pushed me towards her room, where men's trousers and waistcoats and shirts were laid out on the bed. I must admit I quailed for a moment, my nerves catching up with the nonsense I was placing myself into, but then Miss Raffles placed her hands on my shoulders and squeezed, ever so lightly, and I felt grounded under her guidance.

"I think these should all fit you well enough," she said, close to my ear, and stepped around to stand in front of me. She started undoing the buttons down the front of my bodice, and my breath caught on nothing, my hands flexing. She looked up, catching my gaze through her lashes. "Is everything alright, Bunny?"

"Of course," I said, unsure of what had come over me. She smiled, and carried on. She helped me out of my bodice and skirt, helped me step out of my petticoats before she unlaced my corset, helped pull my chemise up off over my head. Her touch was as steady and assured as my maid's but somehow utterly different, even when I couldn't tell if it was fabric or her fingers sliding along my arm. I felt hot and cold in turns, overly aware of my own body.

I hesitated once more when I was down to just my stockings and drawers, half-exposed and unsure if I should go further. My flesh tingled wherever her gaze lingered, as though she had skimmed a feather across my skin rather than her eyes.

"I think you'll need this," she said, turning to rummage through one of the drawers in her dressing table, and I was desperately thankful that she hadn't noticed how oddly I was reacting. She pulled out something that looked like a linen scarf, plain and long, and deftly took hold of my wrist to move my arm up and out of the way. "Hold that there, my dear," she said, flattening one end of the scarf against the side of my ribs, and I obeyed.

She pulled the fabric across the front of my chest and around my back, stretching it under my hand and winding it around again and then one more time before securing it at my back with a pin. When I relaxed and looked down they seemed no smaller than before, but Miss Raffles admired her creation with the corner of her mouth tipped up, so I said nothing. Her fingers stroked along the edge of my skin, smoothing out the join of the fabric. My breath seemed reluctant to come.

"Take a deep breath, Bunny," she said, still studying her handiwork. "Let me know how it feels."

I did so, feeling the fabric tighten slightly but not unbearably, and said, "Odd."

Miss Raffles laughed, her eyes bright as she looked up. This close, the scruff across her cheeks was clearly just paint, smudged and flecked to give the appearance of stubble, but I found myself wondering if her mouth was perhaps still too pretty to belong to a man.

Her hands found my waist, sliding down to find the top of my drawers, and she said, "Those, too. We don't wish to look like the sort of men who wear ladies' drawers under their own," and my laughter loosened something in my chest. I wriggled out of those and into a pair of high-waisted mens drawers, adding garters and socks and then the tan trousers she had chosen for me. A linen shirt and a wool waistcoat followed, and as I dressed Miss Raffles tidied away everything except a long grey coat and black shoes.

I made a gesture towards the full-length mirror in the corner of her room, but she shook her head and sat me in front of her dressing table and unpinned my hair instead, promising to not do anything which couldn't be undone.

I closed my eyes and gave in to her gentle caress, trusting her completely. At one point she turned me around and rested a knee on the seat beside me, her hand under my chin as she tilted my face up to hers — she dabbed a brush across my cheeks and my nose, tapped something along my top lip and spent a while seemingly drawing around my eyebrows, and then topped it all off with a bowler hat.

She declared that I was ready. I stood up, feeling several inches taller, but then she placed her hands on my shoulders and turned me towards the mirror and I saw my mouth droop as I took it in. I looked like my brother at sixteen, short and awkward and trying to grow a mustache that would never fill in.

"Perfect," Miss Raffles announced, and I tried to make that pronouncement fill out my shoulders. "Have a Sullivan and then we will head off. It would not do to present ourselves too early." It again occurred to me to ask what kind of party this was, but I held my tongue.

We whiled away another hour before Miss Raffles finally looked at the clock (it had just ticked past eleven) and declared the time quite ripe for adventure. We left her apartment on light feet but, instead of heading for the stairs that would take us down to the lobby, Miss Raffles turned right and ascended the next flight. This took us up to the roof, through a lead door that opened on silent hinges, and Miss Raffles strode with an easy gait to the edge of the roof and down an iron staircase fixed to the back of the building, leading into the courtyard. Had she informed me of any of this previously I might have questioned it, but my heart was alive with the thrill of the evening and her manner was that of a general, a leader with such zest that one could not help but follow.

Once safely on ground level again she linked our arms and led me out into the street, and I had my first taste of walking in trousers where anyone might see. Had I ever considered it I would have thought the twin tubes would be just as restrictive as my many petticoats, but instead the amount of movement I suddenly had was extraordinary. I found my stride lengthening to match Miss Raffles, looking (to anyone who might glance our way as we passed under a streetlamp) like a couple of young gentlemen in search of an evening's entertainment.

The bindings around my chest were of a similar species to that of a corset and I was, altogether, as physically comfortable as if it were my own familiar clothes I was parading out in, but the scandal that would occur if we were recognised! I felt dizzy with it, and with the cigarettes she had tempted me to and the warmth of her arm linked through my own. Even so, I was clear-headed enough to know I could turn back and face only my own sense of failure, and her disappointment — and I was almost surprised to realise not a single part of me wanted to. The promise of adventure had seduced me utterly.

We kept walking until we reached a busier street and Miss Raffles hailed another cab, giving our direction in a voice so unlike her own I jerked my head to make sure this wasn't some trick, that it was still my Miss Raffles by my side. She smiled at me, a roguish quirk of her mouth that suited the shadow around her jaw, and jumped up first.

The cab rattled us towards the fashionable side of town, the streetlamps growing closer together and the houses further apart, but she paid our fare and walked us several more streets before stopping outside one mansion near the end of the road.

The house was dark. "Are you quite certain this is the right address?" I asked.

"Undoubtedly," she said, and slipped down the side towards the servant's entrance. "It's part of the surprise."

By this point I had quashed so many doubts it seemed churlish to raise more, but I will admit to an apprehension as I followed her into the gloom. At the servant's door she paused, and spent a moment rustling through her pockets before there was the scent of oil, the snap of a match and light flared up in her hand.

"Hold that. Keep it close!" she demanded, handing me a lantern that was shuttered on three sides and then hauling me by the arm towards her, so our bodies blocked the light from the road. She knelt on the step and produced a small case like a painter's tool kit from her coat, unrolling it before her to reveal a collection of metal picks and blades and wires.

"You mean to break in!" I hissed.

"There's no one here to greet us," she said, choosing two of her tools and applying them to the lock in front of her. It was a matter of moments before the tumblers clicked, and Miss Raffles opened the door with a simple twist of the handle. 

I glanced towards the road, convinced that any moment there would be the shriek of a whistle and a dozen constables would leap from the bushes to seize us — but there was only silence, and the fog. 

"Do come inside, Bunny," Miss Raffles said, standing in the hallway. I shivered as I crossed the threshold, and wrapped an arm around myself as she shut the door behind us with the barest click. Within a beat she had me flattened against the wall, pressing two fingers against my lips, and the warmth of her so close transmuted my nerves into something else. After a long, suspended moment she drew her hand away, and apologised. 

"I thought I heard — well, we can't be too careful. The truth is," Miss Raffles said, taking the lantern from me and holding it up to get a view of the hallway we were in, "I'm as overdrawn as you are."

"Surely not!" I whispered, sticking close to her heels.

She smiled at me over her shoulder, her profile an elegant silhouette against the light. "I am very good at keeping up the pretence of a genteel widow, but that does not mean I am one. You said you would do anything to avoid the shame of having to sell the house. I have known that feeling intimately. You know as well as I do, Bunny, wealth is the only way for a woman of our breeding to make her way in the world."

"So you've taken to — what, stealing it?" I asked, the obviousness of our every movement this evening finally sinking in. There should have been horror in my voice, recriminations on my tongue, but my admiration for her was somehow only growing. 

She paused by a door, and sighed. "Remember those nights when you helped me escape the school grounds? I had hoped you had the same pluck as then, but you are too innocent for this kind of thing. Slip out now, Bunny, and go home. I have no fear that you'll mention this to anyone — you were always good to a friend."

"Hang on," I said, catching her sleeve. She paused. "Do you need me, here?"

"It is perhaps possible alone, but more dangerous, certainly—" she began.

"I won't leave you," I declared. 

She turned, holding the lantern up to my face for a moment and seemed to study me with narrowed eyes, but then she swooped close and pressed a hot kiss to the corner of my mouth. "My dear girl, I knew I could count on you."

She launched into her plan, as sure as if we had been partners for years. "I have been studying the house — the servants all sleep in the attic, and the butler slips off to a watering hole in Pimlico whenever the master will be spending the night in town. Our quarry is in the downstairs study, so we are unlikely to be heard by anyone in their beds. What I need from you, dear heart, is a ready ear against any intruders upon our activities. In a house of this size there's no guarantee against unexpected movement, and though I must work with a light I can cover it at a signal from you."

Her faith in me was filling me up like cigarette smoke, pushing down the memory of cold flagstones that was trying to creep up from my toes. "I'm your girl," I said, my voice bolder than I'd ever known it.

"Here," she said, finding my hand and curling my fingers around the handle of the lantern. "You'll need this more than I do, having never counted your steps across this hall. Take your boots off and carry them. Do try to stay quiet."

I made every promise, and followed her up blessedly solid steps and through a narrow door that led into a grand hallway. We paused here, Miss Raffles having indicated for me to cover the light before we touched the door, and only when she was sure no one was about did she allow us to continue our silent procession through the sleeping house.

The unbearable thrill of it! My legs ached with the care I was placing every step, and I feared my clammy, unsteady hand would cause the lantern to creek like a foghorn. My heart raced in that way which only Miss Raffles could excite, my skin at once both too hot and too cold.

As we passed through the drawing room I was stopped short by a photograph on the mantlepiece of a young man in an officer's uniform. He was the very spit of Florence's wealthy fiancé. 

Dread poured over me like cold water into a tepid bath. "Who lives here?" I demanded, my harsh whisper too loud in the stillness.

Miss Raffles looked back at me, an impatient frown to her mouth. "Don't fail me now, Bunny. If your conscience is growing too thick then it might help you to know their wealth comes entirely from the diamond fields in Africa, and there's no shortage of rumours about the underhand tricks Florence's new father-in-law used to secure them."

The thought of stealing from criminals did not, for some reason, mollify me, but I nodded as though it had and we continued to the downstairs study. 

It was a smaller room than the ones we had passed through; both sides lined with tall shelves and filled with books, an ebony desk in the middle of the room, a large sash window opposite the door that showed only the pitch black fog. By my reckoning we were now facing the front garden, and Miss Raffle was careful to stop the beam of light flashing across the glass as she relieved me of the lantern and placed it down beside the desk.

"The locks on the window first, I think, to make our escape a little quicker. It will be a jump to get down, but we'll manage," she said. "Stand by the door, but keep it open by a fraction so you can hear better without risking any light slipping out. No, wait — I think it's safe to put your boots back on now. Tap softly twice on the floor if you think you hear anything, anything at all."

I obliged, and took up my post at the opposite end of the room to her. She had the lantern, and the room was frightfully black without it. I flinched at the first quiet shriek of metal behind me — when I looked all I could see was the dark oblong of the window and a shape a tone darker in front of it — and found I could not relax, even as I tried to ignore the illicit sounds behind me and focus on any noises from the house.

I could not say how long I stood there, straining to catch any movement that might mean our doom. I was positive that Miss Raffles had finished securing our escape and was now working somewhere near the desk, but she used the light sparingly and I only caught a glimpse of some of the tools she was using, and the strange squeaks and whirrs of the drill she was applying to the safe. 

I had, perhaps, spent too long trying to watch Miss Raffles work, but I was certain there had been no suspicious sounds when I turned my attention back to the rooms outside. I frowned. There was a different texture in the shadows of the hallway — a light — someone was watching us! I drew a breath to shout, but he was on me before I could squeak a word.

*

There was not much of a struggle. One man wrestled me to the floor while another rushed past to grab Miss Raffles, the lights were turned on, and soon we were both bound by the wrists and locked inside the study, sitting together on the floor. My hat had miraculously stayed on.

"It seems they hired a vigilant new footman in the two days since I was here. Damn it!" Miss Raffles cursed, and I bit the inside of my cheek.

We could hear them, just outside the door. They were whispering as we were, keen to keep the rest of the household oblivious to their catch. It seemed one (the new footman, Miss Raffles told me) was eager to summon the police, while the other (the french cook, apparently) knew the master of the house would not thank them for letting a drop of wrongdoing touch their name. There was a self-righteous malice in the cook's voice as he spoke of butchers tools and an ice house and I shuddered as though I was already there, my flesh chilled down to my bones.

Even so, I wondered what would be said of us — if Miss Raffles had enough consequence that her disappearance would be marked upon in the papers, or if the joint vanishing act of two old school friends would lead to rumours and speculations of scandal. Perhaps people might assume we had run off together, to the continent or the colonies, and in my high-strung state I was oddly cheered by the thought of some version of myself having adventures.

"What if we reveal ourselves to be women? Would they not treat us kinder then?" I whispered, my voice shaken.

"It would give us the element of surprise, but nothing more," Miss Raffles said, with a coolness I could only admire. "No, I think we must simply escape before they decide what to do with us."

"Simply?" I echoed, but a moment later she had her hands free of the ropes and was nimbly undoing mine. I clutched my reddened wrists. Miss Raffles leapt to her feet and grabbed a solid wooden chair from the side of the room, wedging it with the slightest squeak under the handle of the door. 

She leant close to the panels, listening for just a moment, and then she plunged the room into darkness with a flick of the lightswitch. With only the red glow of the electric burners cooling above me I heard her footsteps rush past, and then the sound of the sash window being pushed up, and then two light taps like boots on a windowsill. I staggered to my feet, still holding my wrist.

"Come on, Bunny!" she hissed.

The door rattled. "Hey!" one of the men called, and I ran for the window.

*

It was nearly one in the morning when we reached the sanctuary of Miss Raffles's flat, having snuck in over the rooftop once more. I collapsed into an armchair by the gently glowing coals while Miss Raffles took off her hat and began to tease down her hair. 

Silence reigned for some minutes, then she said, "Cheer up, Bunny. A night where we escape with our lives and identities intact is as good as any."

"All that, for nothing!" I cried, like the champagne cork on the bottle of my shaken nerves. I flung my head into my hands and half-laughed, half-sobbed with the release. I soon felt the warm touch of her hand on my back, comforting me with such simplicity, and in truth it was only a few more moments before I pulled myself together again, and sat up while wiping my eyes. 

"Well," Miss Raffles said, pulling a handful of gold from a hidden pocket. "I wouldn't say nothing."

"Miss Raffles!" I exclaimed, not for the last time.


End file.
